What Are They Waiting For?

[Enbrethiliel]

+JMJ+

 

Since the main reason I blog is to find online friends to discuss books with, I'm always frustrated when I find an interesting blogger, leave lots of chatty comments on her blog, and then never see her show up on my own. And no, I don't mean one of the really busy ones who gets dozens of comments a week and can't realistically be expected to reply to all of them.

 

It has happened several times, and every time it does, I wonder: What are they waiting for? An invitation?

 

Not that it always works, either. There have been a couple of bloggers whom I did invite to visit my blog--even leaving a link--and nothing ever happened.

 

My own habit is to check out the blog of everyone who leaves me a comment. I guess this isn't a universal practice. I'm just surprised that so many people aren't more curious about new visitors, especially when they average only one or two comments per post.

 

A few weeks ago, someone said that Blogger's comments have been acting up, and that might be one factor when comments don't get returned. But I really don't think it's just a technical problem.

 

Another possibility I've considered is that my blog is just not as interesting to others as it is to me. (Ouch!  LOL!) In that case, I guess this post is just to let everyone know that if you like having chatty commenters on your blogs (as I do), then it's really worth returning visits to get them to keep coming back to you.  =)

[Enbrethiliel]

+JMJ+

 

You remind me . . . I never understood why other bloggers dislike word verification so much until I joined a hop/meme with over a hundred blogs earlier this week. My goal was to leave everyone a comment, but it was so much harder than I thought it would be because of all the participants who had word verification turned on.

 

Incidentally, I do have more than one blog! =P And I suspect that it's the group blog (which has more of a book blog name) which other bloggers visit first when they follow up on my comments. But I post there once every six months! =P

[Joss Arden]

There's something else I wanted to add to this discussion. JMJ, I don't know how you worded your invitations to visit your blog. I don't want to sound rude because I'm sure you have the best of intentions when you invite people to your blog. However, I personally find comments along the lines of "nice blog! Please come visit mine!" to be annoying. I probably wouldn't visit someone's blog if they left a comment like that on mine. Again, I don't know how your invites were worded, so I don't want to suggest that your invites were annoying. I thought that was perhaps worth pointing out. 

 

Also, this has pretty much already been discussed, but I wanted to reiterate this: at least part of it must come down to the fact that people have different reasons for blogging and different goals for their blogs. It sounds like you want to network and make some online friends and that's great. However, not everyone shares in those goals. Point is, don't feel hurt if someone doesn't comment on your blog. There's a very real possibility that it's not about you.

[Enbrethiliel]

+JMJ+

 

That's okay, Joss. Others have asked me similar questions, so I know my original post wasn't clear on that.

 

My comments are never just, "Nice blog! Here's mine [insert link]!" I do try to say something meaningful that will show the blogger I've read what he's written. And I wait until I seem to have a good rapport with a blogger (say, ten comments, back-and-forth, in one discussion) before I invite him over to my blog. The invitation is really a last resort.

 

And now it's kind of funny to me how many people think I'm totally into networking because I started this thread. =P

[Anthony Fox]

Hi there,

I comment on sites without thinking about whether or not they will return the favour.  Most don’t, but if I read something and I have a view I will leave a comment sometimes. I don't have time to comment on everything I read on the net, just too busy.